What is Configure Price Quote (CPQ) And When Should You Use It?

.

If your sales reps are spending more time building quotes than selling, then it’s time for you to find out what is Configure Quote Price (CPQ) as a process as well as a tool and when to make the move to CPQ.

Introducing, a Cymetrix blog series on Configure Price Quote (CPQ). As the first of the series, this article will highlight what is CPQ and how it can help organisations to boost sales productivity.

Every sales rep strives to close deals as fast as possible. To be able to do so, she should be able to prepare the sales quotation, take required approvals and share it with their prospect fast and that too without errors.

This becomes challenging for sales reps in businesses which offer made-to-order products or those offering a range of bundled products/services.

For example, software companies have to deal with complex price offerings for their highly configurable products. Or take the example of custom vehicles which are products with numerous controls and components and can be built for various purposes. The sales rep will have to lug around thick price book with configuration details to prepare the quotes, because of course, we can’t expect all sales reps to be experts on all products and combinations.

Sales teams in the above two examples are likely to run into problems with developing accurate price quotes in the time frame expected by the customer. Eventually incorrect quotes not only delay the sales process, but also results in unhappy customers and hence loss of revenue.

Cymetrix is one of the leading Salesforce consulting companies for SMBs and has provided organizations with solution to these obstacles by implementing the CPQ solution. This article covers what is CPQ and when is the right time to move to this solution.

Quote it fast, and sell it right with CPQ Software tools

1. What is CPQ process?

The acronym CPQ stands for Configure Price Quote. It represents the process leading up to generating a sales proposal for a prospect or customer. The term CPQ is also used for the CPQ Software, which is used to help companies with their CPQ process. The CPQ business process includes:

Configure

The process of selecting and combining product and service options to create a configured product or offering, following your business rules and meeting your customers’ needs.

Price

Deciding the pricing for the prepared sales configuration in the previous step. Here the pricing is not just the sum total of the configured offering, but includes applicable discounts, special pricing, bundle pricing or volume pricing.

Quote

Providing a sales quotation document or proposal that describes the requested products and services, and the price of these

2. About CPQ software

CPQ tools are available as SaaS product as well as on-premise software. The benefits of CPQ software are:

Efficiently share best practices of your best Sales Reps and Channel Partners

Increase deal sizes with cross-sell and up-sell guidance

Eliminate quote/opportunity/contract errors

Quickly create accurate quotes and proposals

Close more deals

How do you know if the time is right for you to make the move to CPQ?

Not every business needs a CPQ solution, and those who need may not be ready for it. Evaluate the following scenarios and see if you’re able to identify some common symptoms:

Product offering is complex and sales reps are unable to provide the possible customizations best suited for the customer or the most profitable for your business.

Sales reps are working on fewer deals due to more time spend on creating quotes.

Quotes generated by your sales team often have incorrect pricing. That could be because they used outdated pricing reference, or perhaps applied incorrect discounts. For bundled sales, sometimes sales reps may not realize that the applied discounts are eating up your company’s margins.

Are your proposals reaching the prospects late due to pricing complexity or long approval times? Late enough that the deals die? Early quotes always get leverage, but delaying beyond a certain point forces the prospect to go out in the market in the hunt of more quotes.

Getting started with CPQ

If you want to learn more about CPQ, our team at Cymetrix is ready to help you. Learn more about Salesforce CPQ solutions offered by Cymetrix.